Authorities call on top court to reject petitions seeking same-sex unions, saying it is against Indian family values
Same-sex marriage supporters in Delhi celebrate a 2018 historic court ruling which decriminalized homosexuality in India. (Photo: UCAN/IANS)
The Catholic Church in India has welcomed the federal government’s stand in opposing same-sex marriage after it challenged the Supreme Court this week to reject pleas by LGBT couples for such unions to be legally recognized.
“It is indeed a commendable job by the Indian government and we appreciate it. According to the Church, same-sex marriage is unnatural and the Church does not accept that which is unnatural because we follow what God has taught us where a family dwells as father, mother and children,” Bishop Peter Paul Saldanha of Mangalore, a member of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India’s Office for Doctrine, told UCA News on March 13.
“The Catholic Church in India neither promotes nor propagates same-sex marriages. It is always for men and women and a happy family,” Saldanha added.
In an affidavit on March 12, the Indian government said it opposed recognizing same-sex marriages in the Supreme Court, saying it “is not comparable with the Indian family unit concept of a husband, a wife and children.”
“Living together as partners and having sexual relationships with same-sex individuals is not comparable with the Indian family concept,” India’s law ministry told the court.
The move was to counter at least 15 pleas filed in the top court seeking recognition of same-sex marriages following a historic 2018 ruling in which the Supreme Court decriminalized homosexuality by scrapping a colonial-era ban on same-sex ties.
Sister Anastasia Gill, a former member of the National Capital Territory of Delhi’s minorities commission told UCA News that “as an individual Christian I respect same-sex couples as they are also the creation of God, but as an institution, we don’t accept them as husband and wife as it is against Church teachings.”
Gill, a lawyer in the Supreme Court, said, “It will be difficult for society to accept them [same-sex couples] as husband and wife because Indian society is not yet ready for it, and which believes in man, woman and children as a family.”
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